


Manufactured for Use

by Sauntervaguelydown (DesdemonaKaylose)



Category: Transformers: Prime
Genre: M/M, a really unflattering look at the business of owning gladiators, contemplation of past blood sport and sexual violence, current use of drugs which is sort of consensual but mostly coerced, i want to talk about megatron's sexual trauma NOW, now with tentatively hopeful ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-13
Updated: 2019-08-01
Packaged: 2020-03-02 10:18:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18809161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DesdemonaKaylose/pseuds/Sauntervaguelydown
Summary: TFP, set during season three, after the Starscream/Megatron reconciliation:Lord Megatron knows he is a better master than his own masters were to him. He was not instructed in compassion; who would have taught it to him? Nevertheless, he is as careful with Starscream as he can be.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> if the tags weren't enough to tip you off this fic is a short romp through a blood sport that is half snuff film and half pornography so tread carefully. It's all done in summary rather than scene, if that helps. I wrote this because I've read a couple fic about Soundwave having a Bad Time in his own days as a gladiator, and I really wanted to talk about what that same history would mean for Megatron and his ability to.... do basically anything but kill, tbh.

Megatron waves a hand at the single cube of energon on the table, as he lets Starscream into his quarters. Shift change turned over only a moment ago, and the promptness pleases him. Starscream passes him with his chin up, which is fetching, and with his wings quivering, which is more so.

It’s been a long time since they’ve done this—before the long journey through deep space, seeking dark energon in the corners of the galaxy; before the last wretched earth year, when Starscream seemed so determined to thwart his authority at every turn; before this pleasant new change of attitude, the rebirth of an old devotion Megatron was beginning to think he would not see again. He likes Starscream most of all when Starscream is at his command, a finely tuned weapon eager to please him, clever and deadly and hungry for his approval.

Starscream’s engine performs best when it’s burning fumes; Starscream does his best work when he is wanting.

“Drink,” Megatron says, and retreats to his seat just beyond the circle of light where the cube lays, settling in to watch Starscream with glittering anticipation.

In the past, when they would move through the steps of this ritual, Starscream was too awed of him, or too fearful of him, to even dream of resistance. Who would dare say no to Lord Megatron, after all, whatever he might require of them?

The fuel Megatron is instructing Starscream to drink is heavily drugged. It always is. Once the tranquilizer kicks in, Starscream will be unable to move except in the smallest twitches, unable to speak except in the breathiest and vaguest moans. In essence, he will be unable to resist Megatron in even the slightest way.

To a degree, Megatron fully admits, this is a test. If Starscream has really come back to him, spark and mind, then he will submit to this service which Megatron has required of him before.

Starscream hesitates. His claws tremble, as he reaches for the cube.

Megatron has never said, and Starscream has never asked--in truth, even now he’s not sure if Starscream understands why they only ever interface when Starscream is limp and pliable and unresponsive. To an outsider, it probably seems a special kind of creative humiliation. Or maybe a tyrant’s merciless bid for total control, unable to surrender even the slightest fraction of power in a moment of potential vulnerability. Starscream might think either of him; he has been creatively humiliated and mercilessly controlled at various points in his service to Megatron. Neither should surprise him.

Better, perhaps, that he think Megatron is choosing to be cold, than he understand Megatron has little choice in this coldness. Interface, for the great and terrible Megatron, cannot be a fair weather whim.

In the bad old days, Megatron had seen his own wicked, heavy spike tear the screams out of more hapless opponents than he could now begin to name. The fuckshows came into fashion when he was a new spark, fresh to the arena--not in every bout, at first, but the demand for it quickly overtaking even the audience’s endless thirst for spilled energon. They had scraped him off the sand of the arena floor after one of his beast baitings, long ago, and without warning or explanation, taken him to the staff medic for an augmentation.

He had been barely more than a century old at that time--he had interfaced once previously, with a stage manager, who had been not overly cruel but also quite happy to extract their pleasure from any frame that would remain meek and still long enough for them to grind out an overload inside of. Megatron no longer has any memory of the anatomy he was sparked with; the manager he remembers only because the feeling of that spike inside of him was so strange and smooth and almost pleasant, and nothing like the encounters that would come after. He remembers it in a nostalgic and dreamy way, although he hated and still hates the memory of the manager himself, who patted Megatron’s face as he pulled himself free and left the gladiator fluid-spattered on the floor of the armory, three feet away from his own sword mounted on the rack.

Megatron remembers the sword most clearly, of all things that day: the light on the curve of the blade, as he stared numbly at it, the oil ground into the pitted metal of the hilt. It did not occur to him until years later that he could have done something to stop it. Somehow it had been worse to realize that even if he had understood his options in time, he could have done nothing differently. The punishment for harming a manager would have been swift and final, and even then, he still desired to live.

But that was the only time he had occasion to use his own sparked body, before it was modified to meet the demands of an ever thirstier crowd.

He had offlined in the sand in the arena, whole, and woken up some time later in the arena med bay, new equipment sore and pinging his processor with unfamiliar sensory data. Between his thighs, wicked and thick and unforgiving: a new spike designed just for him. The bulbous head and ridged spine down the underside were intimidating enough, but the barbs were deliberately designed to catch on the smallest resistance and tear rents in tender mesh.

The medic went about tapping and testing the fresh metal, an uncomfortable and unwanted ache building under his ministrations, and then Megatron had been released into the world a living weapon.

They replaced the valve lining as well, he came to find out later. Much tougher than average, and incidentally less sensitive. “To give you a fighting chance,” the medic said, with a wink, and then gave Megatron’s node a playful pinch. It was good that Megatron had been strapped to the table first, or else he was not sure whether he could have resisted the urge to snap the medic’s hand off with his teeth.

In any case, once the new spikes came, the nature of gladiating changed for the worse.

Megatron, then nameless, had three assets in the ring: he had a naturally powerful frame, a quick mind, and a bounty of patience fueled with spite. In the barracks they were all careful not to become too friendly with each other, afraid of affection that might become hesitation at the wrong time, and some let their isolation fester into bitterness and resentment towards their brethren. Many did not seem to realize, as Megatron did, that he and they shared a common enemy. Outside of their bitter, loveless compound, the real enemies made money off their scar-knotted backs. Megatron knew who deserved the growing storm of his hatred, and wasted no energy on pettier rivalries.

Within a hundred years of the new equipment, an average day at the arena had settled into a new, comfortable pattern. In the morning, they would open with baitings, to warm the appetites of the crowd. Then there would be beast fights. Then there would be matches between the skilled gladiators, more art than slaughter, during which competitors rarely died. And then, once the anticipation had grown so volatile that a stray shot could have ignited it, the unlucky select champions would go out for what might prove to be their final match.

Megatron had been almost always in the final selection for death matches. Spilled energon was apparently some kind of aphrodisiac for the patrons of the arena--the gladiators for them, he had always privately observed, were as much shareware as warrior. As much eyecandy as skilled combatant. They fought bare.

When he mentions this to younger mechs--over a late evening fuel, as it sometimes happens, with the battle map abandoned on the table, dark shadows under all of their eyes and lingering on all of their tongues--they don’t understand what he means. _Bare?_ they say. _You mean like--with your armor stripped off?_

 _No,_ Megatron says, with a mirthless curling smile, _with our modesty stripped off._

Valve bared, of course--that was a given, it would have to be for the rest to work--but also with spike heads peeking from their housing, just the shy hint of something more torture device than organ. When you had your opponent pinned, to claim your victory you would initiate pressurization and spike them, in the dust and the dirt, and if they didn’t scream or cry out, they would live.

 _You don’t mean_ , the young mech would say, in various tones of horror.

But of course he _does_ mean. The implications stand for themselves. By the thousandth year of fighting in that fluid soaked arena, Megatron had learned to kill without thinking at the first cry of pain beneath him. Sword through the intake, claws through the spark, whatever the weapon of the day. And then he would stand and go, and he would tell himself that at least he never overloaded into a corpse, the way some of them did. After a while of living like that, sometimes he thought about it, but at least he never did.

Because the reason Megatron tells this story, most often, is to warn off some rising decepticon star to whom it has suddenly occurred that there is more than one way to curry favor with their lord and master. Young mechs are tiresome and unappealing, each of them mistaking the soft glow of a battle map projected over the table for romance; the quiet of a late night strategic debriefing mistaken for personal interest.

Once they make the leap of looking from Megatron’s bitterly amused face to his appealingly shaped hips, under which the horror hides, they all quickly lose their nerve.

If you neither screamed nor cried, you would live.

Megatron himself rarely lost, and he never cried.

When they made it all the way through, to appease the audience, the victor would take their victim by the battered valve and hold it open for the camera drone, so that everyone could see the froth of transfluid tinged with blue as it was streamed to the viewing screens. The drones always wanted a close up shot of the wet spike too, hovering with fisheyed optics zooming and clicking, circling for the best angle to really see the carnage.

The spikes were made bulbous and wicked because the audience wanted to see the evidence of pain, to feel some thrill of sympathy in their own hot equipment as they wriggled in the stands; the valves were tough and dull because the managers preferred not to lose performers at a rate faster than they could replace them. That was show business.

The fuckshows went out of fashion after a few hundred vorn, when the government tightened down on public indecency and certain moral types began to take charge. Once the Entertainment Standards Code was in full swing, the managers switched to simply renting out their performers to the rich and curious behind closed doors, and the sand went back to soaking up oil and energon alone.

The equipment remained, of course. Half the appeal of fucking a gladiator was the thrill of subjugating something deadly. Megatron could hardly speak for the rest of the barracks, but he knew that when the senators and the rich mechs came to have him, they always wanted his spike out, pressurized and catching the light wickedly as it bounced. He felt very little, tough and scarred as his insides were. Only a few seemed disappointed that he neither moaned nor cried.  

That was the world into which Megatron had been forged for use. The strong take, the weak suffer, and what little pleasure exists belongs solely to those with the means to buy it. Ghoulish, Orion had called it, and then he had cried. He had cried, and Megatron had barely stopped himself from doing something unspeakable at the sound of Orion’s anguish, which took him back to sand and blue-stained cum and the oppressive endless hovering of fisheyed drones.

His once-friends tell him now that he has become the very master he once loathed: whimsical, cruel, and pitiless. But the world itself is whimsical, cruel, and pitiless, and if was not at his hand, then it would be at someone else’s. He was never instructed in compassion; who would have taught him?

Like the old story of the sparkeater chained in the stars, they made him to suck death from the living, and when he turned on his makers at long last, he swallowed their sun instead.

At least at the top, Megatron is freer with his favor than his masters were for him. The vehicons and the eradicons and the miners and the medics are at least allowed their own names, their own pleasures, so long as they do their work obediently and without delay. And Starscream, who is delicate and cunning and ruthless, should not find Megatron’s favor equally as painful as his disfavor.

He has never bothered to ask Starscream for permission, of course--why would he, when he is within his rights as the strongest between them, Starscream’s liege, and the commander of armies?

Nonetheless, he is careful with Starscream.

It will not hurt Starscream, if done in this way. In the millions of years since he fashioned himself a tyrant king, he has had his carnal due from only a handful of other soldiers, and never with any regularity. Once or twice with one of the ambitious young seducers, when their pursuits had irritated Megatron sufficiently enough to make their dawning terror and regret a pleasure for him. He only bothers with the drugs when he takes his due from Starscream; the others he bids lie still and quiet, and trusts that they will obey him or else suffer the consequences.

When the cube sits empty on the table, at last, Megatron maneuvers the limp frame into satisfactory submission on the floor. Those eyes watch Megatron dimly, their usual fire banked to a distant glow.

He touches Starscream’s bare valve, which twitches under his touch in—anticipation, at best, or—anxiety at worst. He prods at the mesh until the mechanisms inside finally cease responding, at which point he knows the tranquilizer is fully in effect. Starscream makes a sound, but it is soft enough that it doesn’t matter.

The head of his spike goes in with almost no opposition. His grip on either of Starscream’s thighs tightens at the first wave of warm, soft pleasure. He forces himself to be still. The barb will be easier to push through once Starscream is slicker; Megatron is dimly aware that slickness has something to do with desire in other mechs, but his own body responds to everything from fear to pain to the sight of Starscream aiming a rifle with indiscriminate wetness, and he’s at something of a loss as to how to inspire that same state in Starscream’s body.

Instead, he releases his grip on one of Starscream’s thighs, hooking the knee joint over his shoulder for safe keeping, and presses his fingers into his own valve. It’s dripping already, easily ready for a punishment that isn’t coming, and he coats his clawtips without difficulty.

He fingers the barb underneath the head of his spike, shivering slightly at the wet slide, and the ridged spine down the underside that makes the whole thing so stiff and unforgiving. Starscream watches him. What Starscream thinks about this ritual, Megatron doubts he will ever know; the fact that they are here now, again, that Starscream took his poison and bore his favor once more, eases him in a way that he refuses to dwell on.

He slides a little further in. The barb pops through; the ridges begin their slow sawtoothed grind into that softness. Starscream’s insides welcome all his frame’s manufactured brutality, and he buries himself inside with a little more patience.

Megatron traces his claws down a lithe but powerful thigh, the slim elegance of a hip, the chest plate, the unnaturally still wing--things about Starscream that delight him endlessly when they are in motion. He’s all the way in, the head of his spike tight against the ceiling of Starscream’s valve, when a faint, breathy sound makes him pause.

Starscream’s claws, palms open, lay by his head--Starscream’s open eye burns dimly into him, his head turned so that the other rests blind against the floor. His valve gives the smallest twitch, and the tips of his claws curl a fraction inward.

“Be still,” Megatron says, tracing the modest swell of his second’s spike with a clawtip, “yes, that’s right.” The warmth of it perhaps surprises Starscream, if the flicker of his optic is any indication. He strokes absently at the silver thigh in his grip. “Your lord is pleased, don’t fret.”

He draws back, his passage slicker than before, and liquid pleasure pours through his struts in a terrible, lovely wave. Another sigh escapes Starscream’s slack intake.

He could do this forever, grinding himself slowly into Starscream, losing himself in the way that it feels and the visceral satisfaction that Starscream is his, correctly and completely, as he should be. If he goes slowly, he may coax an overload out of Starscream. They were less common as the war drew on, but maybe now--

His own valve twitches, and he realizes that his own lubricant has been dripping down his spike and into the stretched slit beneath him.

In the midst of taking Starscream, where he should be pleased and satisfied, sometimes Megatron has a vague and bitter feeling--a shape he cannot find the words to frame--that something has been stolen from him, only what, he could not say.


	2. Spotlight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> you know what, I'm not done with this. Welcome back to the "megatron has never had good sex in his life" show, lets see what else we can do with this concept.

Slowly, Starscream begins to return to his processor.

Megatron is surprisingly gentle with him in the come down, swiping the transfluid from Starscream’s chassis with the rag folded in his great sharp paw. He was always surprisingly gentle in the come down, and by now Starscream really should have ceased to be surprised by it, but the truth is he’s never known what to make of these moments. The quiet in the aftermath, the way Megatron lingers over him. The last time they lay like this, some decades ago, Starscream had been seething with resentment—

Never mind the past. He’s here now, where he belongs: back in favor and back in command. Things will be just like they used to be, and he dares that glitch Shockwave to even dream of taking _this_ duty from him.

Riding that drug is always like unplugging himself from _himself_ in a way that is difficult to articulate. He feels _everything_ , but in a haze that makes it seems as if it’s already happened and Starscream is merely replaying the memory in intimate, lingering detail. 

It takes a long time to form a single complete thought, which in this particular moment is: _I should ask Knockout what the hell my good lord and master is feeding me._ He’s never been on personable terms with the unit medic before. He might as well make use of that.

His valve throbs not entirely in discomfort--there was an overload of his own in there, somewhere, which Megatron naturally continued fragging him right through without pause, and by the time the tyrant had gotten himself off, Starscream had graduated from overstimulated discomfort to overstimulated arousal. He can feel his node throbbing in anticipation of more touch, which of course it will not be getting. Perish the thought. If he’s not too sore to carry through with it by the time he stumbles back to his own quarters, he’ll manually grind the last of the charge out of his node before he collapses into recharge.

The soft rag passes over his middle, where his own splatter of transfluid is cooling on his armor. There just enough motor control building in him to weakly arch into the sensation--he wants to, he can’t help wanting to--but he restrains himself, for fear of letting on that he’s begun to reset from the drug. He always plays dead a while longer than he has to. There’s not much control he can get in a scenario like this, which makes him scrabble all the harder for every scrap of leverage available. 

Besides. Once he starts moving again, Megatron stops holding him like this.

And then Megatron pauses, one hand on the mess of his plating, the other hand cupping Starscream’s helm in its talons. The optical feed is still quite blurry, but what he can see of Megatron seems unusually contemplative.

“Perplexing creature,” Megatron observes, in an absent voice that doesn’t seem to care whether Starscream is listening or not. Maybe he thinks Starscream can’t hear him, like this. If that’s the case, Starscream is in no hurry to relieve him of the illusion. This is the only way in which the white hot spotlight of Megatron’s attention does not inevitably burn him.

“I know you can hear me.”

Damn.

Starscream lets his optic focus.

The first time Megatron had ordered him to berth--figuratively speaking, of course there was no _berth_ involved--he had nearly shaken with anticipation and anxiety. Although the old style of gladiating had been out of fashion for longer than Starscream had held a rank with any facsimile of leisure time, and so he had never seen it himself, the memory of it survived in all sorts of seedy places. One only had to look at the colloquialisms-- “uglier than a pitspike”, for example, which aptly described anything from a bloodbath in the trenches to the reprehensible mug of Shockwave’s precious predacon. He’d had _some_ idea what kind of fire he was playing with.

One could still find the old stills of Megatron’s anatomy, if one had the inclination and the tenacity to dig them up. And Starscream was nothing if not tenacious, even back then. He’d thought he’d been prepared for the worst, knowing that much, but then--poison in a shot of coolant, a demand without explanation--and he hadn’t known what was happening until it was already in him, and then he had panicked, but mutely, trapped inside the databanks of his own mind--

Megatron’s palm cups his helm so easily. Starscream wants him to stay that way, to not let go.

“You overloaded,” Megatron says, looking him directly in the eye, and Starscream’s tanks go cold. Suddenly the claw on his chassis feels less like a gentle enigma and more like a threat.

His mouth struggles to form words. “A-apologies, master,” he manages. “I won’t…” 

Megaton gives him a look that could pass for amused, brow cocked. This is-- this is new. They’ve never _spoken_ like this before. Things have been good since he came back--the banter, collaboration, perhaps even _flirting_ if he dared call it such--but at a time like this, he has absolutely no idea how to process Megatron’s indulgence of him. He never knows when the axe will drop.

“Do you think that I have something against your pleasure?” Megatron remarks, and it must be a trick question, it must be a trap, so Starscream will navigate the minefield it _very carefully--_

“...I am at your disposal, master,” he rasps. “In whatever way… pleases you.”

Megatron only hums in the barest acknowledgment, appraising Starscream’s frame section by section with his gaze. 

“You stopped overloading, the last few vorns. And yet here you are now, messy for me. But I’ve done nothing differently…” A sharp clawtip rubs thoughtfully at the smear.  “What changed?”

Starscream swallows with his dry intake. “Forgive me,” he says, “prior to my--wayward desertion--I harbored… regrettable sentiments. Of course I understand _now_ ,” he rushes to add, “my place, my purpose, which is to serve you in any way you deem fit.”

Megatron pauses in his slow mapping of Starscream’s chest plates, clawtips clicking to a stop over the violet brand. “What has that got to do with it?”

Starscream is at a loss for words, which is a dangerous place for a mech of his limited resources. Surely Megatron isn’t going to demand that Starscream be _honest_ about his emotional reservations for the last several centuries? Not while he’s helpless, unable even to grovel for forgiveness? What kind of sick trap is this?

 _When you were floating dead in space I thought of fucking you,_ Starscream could say. _Lifeless as you were. That’s how you like me, isn’t it? Megatron Corpse-fragger, can’t get it up for anything with a sparkpulse. I know all about your conquests, Master. I know where you’ve been._

Megatron’s physicality might have remained the same from one era to the other, but it was much more difficult to wring any enjoyment out of the process when one was waiting constantly for the warhead to detonate. 

More than once he’d considered throwing the curdled fuel aside, standing firm in the spotlight of Megatron’s rage, saying, _No, you’ll take me like this or you’ll find some other drone to dump your fluids in--_

After the initial delight of Megatron’s attention had soured, this… ritual… had seemed little more than a grotesque powerplay with a foregone conclusion. Starscream had more than proved his willingness over and over again, and yet the process remained unchanged. He had not been properly taken into Megatron’s berth any more than he had been taken into the tyrant’s confidence--always at arms’ length, punished soundly for his failures and unacknowledged in his success. 

In the seething bitterness of the years after Cybertron’s ruination, Starscream had become convinced that it was all a vicious joke at his expense. It was only his suffering that Megatron found attractive, and that was why he never bothered to ensure that Starscream felt anything pleasant at all. Although it was a bit of a mystery why he hadn’t been torn node from node by that terrible spike already, but--perhaps that was still coming, the next layer of sadism after mind games had lost their appeal.

“Well, I--” he says. “I resented my duties, at that time, you see?”

Starscream has a terrible, awful thought, which is: maybe he was right the first time, and Megatron is just going to toy with him like this for the rest of eternity, without even allowing him the release of death. 

“And now?” Megatron prompts.

Diplomatically neglecting to mention how much he loathes the drugs still, Starscream says, “I should think the evidence speaks for itself.”

“I suppose it does.” Megatron goes back to fingering his collar faring. “I had never seen anyone overload while being spiked before you,” he says. “I thought perhaps you were unique.”

Starscream can’t help it, his jaw drops. “You never--” he tries, “no one you took ever--?”

“Is it common?” Megatron asks, giving Starscream’s slick and still-swollen valve a thoughtful look. “Dreadwing and Deadlock never did.”

A twisted thrill of pride lights up Starscream’s spark. That’s because he’s _better_ , a better lay than even Dreadwing, the old sycophant. 

Well. The truth is that it’s mostly an accident of mood and angle when it does happen, and perhaps if the others were taking it as often as Starscream used to, they would have stumbled across it as well, but--never mind that, he is clearly the superior lay. The evidence bore it out.

Before the Decepticons, before the war, Starscream had clawed and schemed and scrapped to become anything more than another disposable cog in a chain of command. All he had ever _really_ wanted, in those days was--individuality, power, attention--

Being on the run, crippled and isolate, had given him a while to consider his priorities. He’d taken a long look at his options. He’d asked himself what he wanted, and what he’d found was this: he wanted his home back, and he wanted Megatron’s favor again. 

Since they’re already handling nitroglycerin, Starscream decides to go for broke. “Just to be ...crystal clear,” he says, “I _am_ permitted to overload?”

“You are,” Megatron tells him. “I encourage it, in fact.” Something flashes through his optics that--oh--it’s the same look that Starscream thinks might be _flirting_ , the wicked indulgence, the secret flash of familiarity, and Starscream twitches against the fading effect of the drug as his anterior node _throbs_. 

Megatron pauses. His wicked look cools, and Starscream can feel him getting ready to let go, to disengage, and all at once he can’t stand it.

“Wait,” Starscream says, desperately, “wait, master, please.”

Megatron hesitates, which is a good sign. Starscream takes the cue to push his luck again--he never could quite stop himself from playing with fire. It’s why he made such a terrible scientist, and such a successful tactician.

“I’ve pleased you, haven’t I, my lord?” Starscream says, letting his legs fall a little wider. “ I know my pleasure is second to yours but--given that you are _generous_ , and _merciful--_ If you would permit your humble servant…?”

“Speak plainly Starscream. What is it you want?”

Starcream licks his lips nervously. “An overload,” he says. “I’m not far from another.”

Megatron glances warily down Starscream’s frame. “By now I shouldn’t be surprised at your ambitions, I suppose. But that’s quite impossible. I could repressurize in not too long, but I have no more dosage on hand to give you.”

“No, no,” Starscream says, urgently, “no, that isn’t what I meant.”

Megatron’s expression darkens. “Surely you don’t expect me to submit to _you_ , Starscream. Ambition is acceptable within reason, but you had best know your limits.”

“I just want you to touch me!” Starscream shouts, losing his patience all at once. His heels smack against the floor as he wriggles in a fit of pique. “Why is it so hard to get you to touch me!”

And then he claps his hands over his mouth. 

Megatron stares down at him. The good news is that the claw cradling his helm hasn’t crushed his processor yet. The bad news is that it could absolutely still happen. He scrambles to find safer ground.

“What I mean is--apologies, master, what I meant was--”

But instead of rage, Megatron is settling into something almost like intrigue. His free hand hovers over Starscream’s chest for a moment, before stroking his cockpit. 

“A relatively modest request,” Megatron remarks, as Starscream shivers under his slightest touch. 

“ _Thank_ you, master,” Starscream breathes, feeling starry and dazed, relieved and giddy. Getting _away_ with things always makes him reckless, which is why the next thing out of his mouth is, “If you’ll just finger me, I’ll take care of my spike, master, it’s no trouble--”

At which point Megatron halts his absent stroking with a sharp press of clawtips on glass. Starscream winces.

“Do you desire an injury?” Megatron asks, suspicion in his low voice. “What game are you playing?”

Starscream’s processor spins furiously. “No game, my lord,” he says, spark sinking. “Of course you needn’t do anything you don’t wish. I can take care of it alone, I would never presume--”

“If I put my claws inside of you, I’d rip you to shreds,” Megatron says impatiently. 

“Oh,” Starscream says. “That’s… true. I was mostly just hoping for… you know...” Primus he’s going to blow a gasket if he has to resort to crude euphemisms just to get his commander to rub his node, but for the life of him he can’t think of a subtly sexy way to say it. This is by _far_ the most inept attempt at a seduction he’s ever had the misfortune to be involved in. 

Megatron eyes him for a moment. 

Then he pulls Starscream up to lay across his lap, against his thrumming mass, and says, “Show me.”

Oh damn. Oh hell. It’s hard to see where the trap here lies, but it’s all so wildly outside of his previous realm of comfortable misery that he can’t help but poke at it suspiciously. This is the white hot spotlight, the burning place, pinned solitary underneath Megatron’s caprice. 

Starscream lifts a hand—it isn’t difficult, he could probably even get up and walk now, although it would be laughably wobbly—and hesitates over his own interface array. He can feel Megatron’s scrutiny like an electric prod at the base of his neck, almost painful even as it blazes through him. He recesses his spike and takes a steadying vent. 

His clawtip presses down against his crackling node, and immediate pleasure cascades up his spinal strut, arching his back, making his voice hum in his throat. He presses a little harder than he should, grinding out that first delicious touch after so long just aching without recourse. His thrusters scrape the floor.

“Mmm,” he says. “H—ahh…”

The first touch is always the sweetest. He licks his fingers quickly, slicking them with as much oral fluid as he can manage after the drugged dry-mouth, and returns his attentions to the place where his nerve relays crackle and snap like an interstellar storm. He catches his node in the V between his fingers and strokes the lips of his valve as he arches unthinkingly against Megatron’s chassis. 

He onlines his optics again to find Megatron fixed on him, something between hunger and awe burning hot in his optics.

Megatron lets his hand drift down to join Starscream’s, the heat of him almost touching, the crackle of his EM field prickling against the back of Starscream’s wrist. Starscream tenses, spark daring to throb in anticipation.

Megatron’s fingers slide beneath his own. The touch that Megatron gives him would almost be _tentative_ , if such a word could dare be applied to the maniac decimator of ten thousand battlefields. Starscream makes an encouraging sound, charge zipping through him.

Megatron rolls the bright little bud between his fingers and Starscream all but whimpers for it--it’s a rough touch but it satisfies something ravenous in his lines. His hands rub anxiously over his own thighs, he’s trying to stay still, but it’s so hard when Megatron is squeezing and pinching him right to the edge of pain. He _does_ whimper, now.

Megatron’s fingers pause--and then smooth out--and then stroke down over the aching bud almost tenderly.

“Yes!” Starscream says, bucking up into the clumsy pressure against his anterior node. “No, no--There, that was it! Harder!”

Megatron stiffens behind him, and Starscream freezes. Cold condensations breaks out on the back of his neck.

“S--sorry, master,” he pants. He grips his thighs hard. “Got a little carried away.”

“...No,” Megatron says, “go on. Tell me what it is you want.”

Well. _This_ is new territory. If this is the point of no return, Starscream decides, then he might as well stop apologizing and squeeze it for all it’s worth. 

Starscream lays the palm of his hand over the back of Megatron’s and threads their fingers together. Tentatively, and then with more confidence, he draws Megatron over the tender mesh, showing him where he wants him.

“Just do what would feel good for you,” Starscream murmurs, between tensing and sighing into Megatron’s armor. His interest revs just at the thought of Megatron touching him the way Megatron touches himself, the secret intimate knowledge. “However you do it for yourself…”

With their fingers interlocked, Starscream can feel the tiny twitch of--surprise, or hesitation, or uncertainty--

“I have a spike,” Megatron says, with something like disapproval in his growling voice. “Why would I waste time on such a fickle receptor?” 

Starscream makes a face, which is fine because Megatron isn’t looking at his face anyway. “Because it feels _good?”_ he suggests. “Maybe it’s not the brute slap and pull you use on your spike, but once you work out the rhythm, it’s--”

He breaks off into a moan, thrusters scraping the floor, as Megatron takes control of their hands and pushes lower, stroking over the sticky swollen lips of Starscream’s valve. Starscream demonstrates how to grind the heel of his palm back against the node, and lets his wings shiver unabashedly.

“--It’s like your whole frame is part of it,” he finishes, voice barely escaping his throat.

Megatron makes an absent noise. All his attention is on Starscream’s body now--the minute shakes of his frame, the swell and wetness and light of his array--tracking every little jolt like it’s the most important battlefront of the vorn. 

This is _it_ , the white hot center, the burning place. Even when Megatron’s fingers miss their mark, Starscream’s frame still overflows with an intoxicant more potent than engex. He thinks he could overload just from that, from the way Megatron’s attention fills him up to mind numbing overflow.

His free hand scrambles for his spike, twitching and hesitating as he hovers over it, longing to squeeze himself roughly while Megatron cossets his node. He makes a pleading noise.

“You’re hungry for more aren’t you?” Megatron murmurs. He pulls Starscream flush against his chassis, locking him in with an arm that feels as much like support as restraint. “That’s right, go ahead. I want you like this.” 

His spike all but leaps into his grip, and Starscream takes himself in hand with a moan of almost agonized relief. The arch of his back strains against Megatron’s tight, tight hold. 

“Well done,” Megatron says. His frame rumbles low and heavy against Starscream’s back. “Show your lord and master how much you want it.”

Starscream glows with the rare heat of praise. He’ll make any noise Megatron wants, if his liege will keep saying things like that. He rubs the side of his face against Megatron’s chestplate, wanting more of _something_ , although he’s not sure what. 

“Look at you,” Megatron says, leaning into his audial. “Ahh, just _look_ at you. _This_ is where you belong, I think. Not scrapping with my officers for power, not scheming in dank wreckage, not skulking about in the dark of my warship. I should have known you had more to give me.”

“Mmnn,” Starscream says, distantly aware that he’s losing coherency.

“You belong here,” Megatron says, “pleasing me.” 

His fingers slip down to streak hot lubricant over the throbbing bead of Starscream’s node. His touch is more confident now. The slick glide rattles Starscream to his struts.

“Mmph,” Starscream says, “nnngh.”

The arm across his chest tightens until his vents creak. “You belong in my arms,” Megatron growls. “In my grip. At my mercy.”

Starscream chokes on pleasure. He’s going to burn, and it’s all he’s ever wanted.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Minimum Acceptable Standards](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22005091) by [Neery](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neery/pseuds/Neery)




End file.
